Pichai budgets THB10 bn to remove 1 million debtors from credit blacklist
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira said on Wednesday that he would speed up disbursement of 10 billion baht from the fiscal budget to clear non-performing loans (NPLs) of around 1 million debtors of government banks.
Pichai said the debt owed by around 1 million debtors of special government banks had been listed as NPLs, as a result those people were now placed on the blacklist of the National Credit Bureau.
He said most of these 1 million debtors owed just around 10,000 baht per head on average to the state bank.
The finance minister said the government would like to clear these small debtors from the blacklist, hence the Finance Ministry would allocate 10 billion baht to clear their debt first.
The debtors would be required to repay the loan amount to the government within two or three years, Pichai added.
Pichai said the government also had a plan to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) whose loans had become NPLs from the blacklist by having the Government Savings Bank (GSB) form a joint venture with Bangkok Commercial Asset Management Plc (BAM).
Pichai said GSB and BAM would set up the Joint Venture Asset Management Company (JV AMC) to solve NPLs of small-time debtors of state banks.
The finance minister said state banks had already cut their losses on these NPLs by small-time debtors or SMEs so the book value was not high. The management of these NPLs would be more effective after they were transferred to JV AMC, Pichai said.
GSB director Withai Rattanakorn said the state bank and BAM would be 50:50 partners in the JV AMC.
He said the JV would be established within this month and it would start operating next month.
Withai said the GSB would transfer 400,000 debtors with outstanding loans totalling 40 billion to be managed by the JV AMC. A debtor’s loan ceiling would be 20 million baht to be eligible for debt transfer to the JV AMC, he said.
